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It’s been a significant year for criminal justice in the Bay Area, but many of the challenges have come late in the year.

In October, Oakland lost Police Chief Anthony Batts, who resigned saying he couldn’t work in the current political climate. Days later, Oakland’s police department plunged into scandal after a raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment turned violent. Meanwhile, the state had its own share of controversy, as it planned to shift responsibility for thousands of inmates to the local level, what’s known as realignment. KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta joined Holly Kernan to discuss what we can expect over the next year from the local and state criminal justice system.

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HOLLY KERNAN: Alight Rina, let’s start with the local. It was a tumultuous year for Oakland. We lost a police chief, and then we saw repeated clashes between police and protestors, and now we have a petition to recall the mayor based largely on public safety issues. So how is this going to work itself out in 2012?

RINA PALTA: The first thing they’re going to have to deal with right off the bat is the federal district court. They’re going to be called in in January to account for all the issues that the police departments had over the years. And Judge Thelton Henderson is really looking to see if Oakland is able to meet its requirements under its settlement agreement. And they haven’t been able to do that so far. He’s kind of given them January as a last deadline to make things work, and he’ll undoubtedly be looking at what happened at the end of this year with Occupy Oakland, with crowd control. And I’m not sure he’s going to like what he sees.

KERNAN: And the context of this is going back to the Riders’ case?

PALTA: Right, exactly. There were some issues that were resolved between people who were bringing these accusations against the police department, and the police department itself. They agreed to basically change the way they handle crowd control, change the way they interview suspects, change the way they deal with firearms, and the district court basically said they don’t have enough progress on this issue.

KERNAN: And so what happens?

PALTA: So if they can’t display that they’ve come up to code basically by January, the judge has threatened to put them under federal supervision, direct federal supervision, which means having a receiver in charge of the department, not the police chief, not the city. And he’s threatened to do this. It’s unclear if he’ll actually follow through on that. But that’s what they’ll be talking about in January.

KERNAN: And in 2012 Oakland will certainly choose a new police chief, since former Chief Anthony Batts left in October.

PALTA: Right, so we’ll see who is mayor in 2012, if the current mayor Jean Quan can stave off this recall petition. It sounds like the people who are bringing this recall petition are people who did not like her from the beginning. I’m not sure how much support there is in her group of former supporters for recalling her. But undoubtedly, whoever is the mayor will pick whoever is police chief.

I just started talking to the mayor’s office yesterday, and they’re going to stick with Howard Jordan, who is the current interim chief indefinitely. They can do that indefinitely. They don’t have to appoint a new police chief. It’s not clear what his relationship is with Mayor Quan at this point. It’s probably not great. But they will stick with him for the foreseeable future.

KERNAN: So let’s talk about the situation at the state level where there are a lot of things going on right now. Primarily, obviously, a massive economic crisis that’s resulting in cuts to education, mental health care, and a lot of social programs. How is the budgetary system going to play out in the criminal justice arena?

PALTA: Well, there’s a lot of hope that this budgetary crisis will bring criminal justice reform in a state that’s ramping up its criminal justice system in the past few decades.

KERNAN: You mean incarcerating more people, building more prisons?

PALTA: Incarcerating more people, building more prisons, tougher sentences, people in jail for longer. And so Sacramento insiders are really saying now this is a window for change. This budget crisis is a window for change.

I spoke with Sasha Abramsky, who has covered California politics for decades. And here’s what he had to say about now being the time for reform:

SASHA ABRAMSKY: Well, there certainly is a window at the moment. People have talked about the moral inequity of a law like Three Strikes, and the arbitrary nature of these laws. A lot of people have looked at the racially disproportionate impact of many criminal justice policies. But it hasn’t generally gained a lot of traction. But you know, there’s been a willingness to give legislators the benefit of the doubt on criminal justice policies.

And now what’s happening is people are no longer giving them the benefit of the doubt. Not because there’s been a moral sea change – it’s because there’s been a financial sea change. There just isn’t the money in the system anymore. So people are looking at a bankrupted, or near bankrupted California. They’re looking at the cost of the prison system, which is about $10 billion a year.

KERNAN: Rina, how big is that window, so to speak?

PALTA: Well, one thing we talked about is the fact that this window will only involve things that involve money. So there’s going to be a lot of ballot initiatives on the ballot in 2012, probably one to end the death penalty, probably one to reform three strikes. And he predicts these ballot initiatives will be successful only to the point that people can see them as fiscal issues, not moral issues. So with the death penalty, that’s probably really tough. It’s not a big money suck. It is expensive, but it’s not on the $10 billion range that the whole prison system is.

You know, the other big issues that’s going to have a lot of impact in 2012 is how we elect our legislators is going to change a lot. Some people call it an open primary – it’s not really an open primary, but what will happen in 2012 is Proposition 14 will go into effect. That means that primaries will involve all kinds of people and the top two vote-getters from the primary will go on to compete in the general election for Assembly and for State Senate. So it could be two Democrats competing in the final election; it could be two Republicans. But the idea is probably we’ll find more moderates at the state level. And so we’ll see how that will play out in criminal justice, how it will play out in the budget, and how lobbyists will deal with this new situation at the state level.

KERNAN: The other big issue on a state level is what’s called realignment, which is counties have more responsibility for inmates. They’re not sending as many inmates to state prison. So what are people watching to see if realignment is successful?

PALTA: Sure, we’ll obviously be looking at the crime levels and whether or not those go up post-realignment. We’ll also be looking to see what each county does with the money it’s been given from the state to deal with these inmates. So there’s some problems already.

We’re hearing about some counties not putting people in jail for violating their parole so there’s no consequences for violating your parole. We’re hearing about a lot of counties that are just going to take a lot of state money and build new jails instead of putting it into rehabilitation.

So there’s all kinds of things happening all over the state, and we’re going to be watching to see what the final consequence is, if recidivism rates go down. If incarceration rates go up at the local level, there’s a lot of different things that could happen.

This is what Sasha Abramsky had to say about realignment.

ABRAMSKY: If it’s done well, it will be an exercise in creative thinking at its best. It will shrink a bloated system. It will result in a more accountable system. It might result in a low recidivism rates. It might result in better drug treatments. If it’s done badly, just as a cost-cutting maneuver, then we’re going to a whole bunch of people essentially left out on the sidelines. And that comes with a host of problems. We saw that with the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill a generation ago. The money didn’t accompany it, and it resulted in a series of rolling problems and disasters. So we have to look at where the money goes in the realignment process.

KERNAN: Looks like we will be hearing a lot more from Rina about criminal justice reform and realignment. So we’ll check in with you again soon. Thanks, Rina.

On October 1, 2011, California experienced a major change to its criminal justice system. After the Supreme Court ordered the state to drastically reduce its prison population, the Legislature decided to shift responsibility for a wide variety of offenders to the local level. KALW’s criminal justice editor, Rina Palta has been following the developments. She joined Holly Kernan in the studio.

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HOLLY KERNAN: Let’s start with a quick refresher on realignment. What does it do?

RINA PALTA: Realignment basically changes the punishment for a large group of felonies. For things like drug possession, petty theft, and car theft, prison used to be an option on the table. And some counties in California were using prison quite a bit for people who committed these low-level, non-violent felonies. So when the state was told to reduce its prison population, this is one of the big groups that it identified of people who should not be in state prison. The other group was parole violators, who generally serve really short, 90-day sentences.

So as of October 1, these offenders are officially not the state’s responsibility anymore. They’re left to the counties to decide what to do with. And the counties can opt for a variety of punishments, like house arrest, probation, community service, mandatory drug treatment, or incarceration at the county jail.

KERNAN: So it sounds like the state has essentially given a large set of its responsibilities to the counties. How are counties paying for these new offenders?

PALTA: Well, along with this new responsibility does come some money. But not a lot. Counties were given an amount based on the number of people they generally send to prison, and that can be divided between the sheriff’s department, probation, and whatever other services are needed for this new population. And the county can basically decide to divvy up the money any way it sees fit.

KERNAN: One of the issues we’ve talked about a lot regarding realignment is whether the new law will lead to reform in California, which is a state has that’s spent so much money on prisons and has incarcerated so many people for so long. So now we are one month in – what’s your sense of whether or not things are changing in California?

PALTA: Realignment has absolutely been billed as a reform measure by Governor Jerry Brown’s administration. But that message was not well received in many corners of the state – mainly Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and a lot of other counties that have a lot of people to deal with now that they won’t be in prison. And those counties continue to exert a whole lot of political pressure on the governor and on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. In a sort of preview of how Republicans are planning on playing this issue, the Assembly GOP released a video in October, attacking the governor. Here’s a clip:

CA REPUBLICAN PARTY VIDEO: Assemblyman Nielsen says realignment is a scheme for the state to transfer some of its budget problems to cash-strapped counties and to release prisoners early without getting its hands dirty. “They are dangerous. Many have serious and violent offenses. Every citizen should be preoccupied with their personal safety and the safety of their family members.”

KERNAN: That was a clip from a video being circulated by California’s Republican party, attacking the governor for what they say is threatening public safety and dumping the responsibility for prison overcrowding on the counties. Rina, are Nielsen’s criticisms fair? What are the public safety concerns here?

PALTA: Well there’s no question that California counties don’t have the space right now to house all the people currently in jail as well as the new realigned population. So counties may have to let people out of jail earlier and that may or may not cause an uptick in crime. Jails could let out some people who are awaiting trial and can’t afford bail, which is really the vast majority of the jail population right now. But there is always a chance that someone in custody, even if they haven’t been convicted of a crime yet, could be dangerous if they’re let out.

KERNAN: And what about the other concern, that realignment will lead to more prison construction in the state that’s already got a lot of prisoners?

PALTA: Sure, well at first the state said that wouldn’t happen unless counties invested their own funds in building new jails, and prison secretary Matt Cate even said the state was deliberately not giving counties enough money to realignment to imprison the same number of people the state has been locking up, that since lockups are the most expensive option, counties would have a natural incentive to look into alternatives. But recently the state has announced that they’re giving counties $600 million to construct new jail beds and in the reform community this is being viewed as California once again building itself out of its prison problem instead of working on alternatives to incarceration.

Here’s what Emily Harris, statewide coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget has to say about this development.

EMILY HARRIS: It’s pretty terrifying when 35 of our 58 counties are wanting to build more jail cells. When we think about California’s history, we’ve just been addicted to incarcerating people. And I think it’s having an impact on our economy, on our neighborhoods, on our community members. And if we don’t do something soon to stop it, we’re going to be just continuing a legacy of mass incarceration and thinking about where California will be in five years or 10 years, we’re going to be in 58 Plata-Coleman cases because we’re not actually changing the conditions for people in prisons and jails.

KERNAN: Rina, how is this all playing out in the Bay Area?

PALTA: Leaders in the Bay Area right now are feeling somewhat double-shafted. In the first round of funding for realignment, they didn’t get as much money as other counties because San Francisco and Alameda counties have really done a good job of keeping low-level offenders at the local level not in prison. And now, as Harris points out, the state, instead of giving more money to the kinds of things that the Bay Area has tried to invest in – you know, rehabilitation programs, drug treatment, half-way houses – the state is giving out money for jail construction and jail construction only.

As for outside of the Bay Area, it’s hard to imagine why a county like San Bernardino or Los Angeles or Sacramento would take their own money and invest in alternatives if the state is offering up money to do what has long been the default mode in this state, and that’s add more beds.

Now, we’ll turn to the most important local election that very few are paying attention to. Last year, Kamala Harris was elected to statewide office, which meant leaving her post as San Francisco’s district attorney. That caused outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom to do something unprecedented: he appointed his police chief to replace her. Now, to defend his seat, District Attorney George Gascon will have to fend off four competitors. KALW’s Ben Trefny spoke with criminal justice editor, Rina Palta to discuss the candidates.

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BEN TREFNY: So Rina, why is this race so important?

RINA PALTA: People have a vague idea of what a district attorney does: prosecuting crimes. But also, the district attorney basically makes criminal justice policy for the county they’re in. So it’s up to the DA what sorts of crimes get punished and to some degree, with what sanctions. The district attorney decides, for instance, whether to ask for the death penalty if someone’s accused of murder.

TREFNY: So in November we’ve got five candidates in the race and we’ll be hearing excerpts of interviews from all of them shortly. This is the first really competitive election for this position that San Francisco has had since Kamala Harris was first elected back in 2003. What are the big issues that you see at stake?

PALTA: As with any election, especially one like this, where ranked choice voting is forcing candidates to band together and form strategic alliances, there are a number of dominating themes. And I’ll let one of the candidates, David Onek, introduce the first one. Onek is a member of the Bay Area’s robust criminal justice reform community and has worked for a number of organizations, like Walden House and the Haywood Burns Institute, and was also a member of the San Francisco Police Commission.

DAVID ONEK: Our criminal justice system is completely broken. We are spending so much on corrections in this state, on incarceration, that we virtually bankrupt the state of California and we’re unable to pay for all the services that would actually make us safer, like more cops, community policing on the street, like more teachers in our schools, and more services in our communities.

PALTA: At the moment, Onek is the founding director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, and he’s been working to reform the criminal justice system for twenty years. And in this race, he’s the changer, the guy who wants to step in and make San Francisco a national model, a kind of experiment in how you can do things differently with crime and punishment.

TREFNY: That sounds great in theory, but what would David Onek actually do to overhaul the criminal justice system?

PALTA: That’s what I asked Onek. Here’s what he said.

ONEK: So let’s talk about drugs for a minute. The War on Drugs has been a complete failure. The Onion had a great line a few years ago, before it became more popular, which said “Drugs Win Drug War.” And I think that really sums up where we are with the War on Drugs. Nobody can say it’s working. We need to do something different. And I absolutely will not be incarcerating people for low-level possession of drugs. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s wasting precious prison resources that should be going to serious and violent offenders. We need to provide treatment to folks who need it. We need to provide services for those with mental health needs and help people stay on the right path.

PALTA (To David Onek): So day one, coming into office, looking at your caseload, talking to your prosecutors, do you – without these kinds of programs in place already, because they exist to some degree, but not nearly to the degree that would be necessary, do you say we’re not prosecuting this, we’re just going to dismiss this or we’re going to put this person on probation?

ONEK: Well, we do have excellent community-based programs in San Francisco. I think the programs are there. We need to make sure that they do receive additional funding, as we have more offenders coming back to the county level under realignment. Both for the law enforcement and supervision side and for the community side. And so I will absolutely fight for that and we need to capture savings that are made by reducing our prison population – of course some of those savings are going to go to deficit reduction – but we need to capture a portion of those savings, what other states call “justice reinvestment,” and make sure that it’s reinvested at the community level.

TREFNY: That was district attorney candidate David Onek talking about what his priorities would be if elected to San Francisco’s top law enforcement spot. You’re listening to Crosscurrents. I’m Ben Trefny, and we’ll be hearing from all of San Francisco’s DA candidates today. I’m here with KALW’s criminal justice editor, Rina Palta. So Rina, if Onek is “the reformer” candidate, where does someone like Sharmin Bock, who’s a career prosecutor, stand?

PALTA: Everyone in this race is positioning themselves as a reformer, which if you know anything about most district attorneys races, is pretty unique to San Francisco’s political environment. Now candidate Sharmin Bock is, like you said, a career prosecutor who currently is an assistant DA in Alameda County. And she’s best known for her work going after child sex traffickers in Oakland. She’s the only woman in this race, something that’s probably going to help her at the polls, and she’s one of two experienced prosecutors running to be San Francisco’s top prosecutor. All the pieces are really in place for her.

TREFNY: Except that she’s not the incumbent.

PALTA: True, and the question is whether she lives and breathes San Francisco values, like a commitment to rehabilitation instead of prison, and life in prison instead of the death penalty for murder – things that are generally important to San Francisco voters, but are treated differently in the slightly more “tough on crime” Alameda County, where Bock has spent most of her career. When I interviewed Bock, I asked her if she was too steeped in the criminal justice system to be able to step back and look at its flaws and find innovative solutions. And here’s what Bock said about her capacity to make reform.

SHARMIN BOCK: You know, I think I’m the only one who actually has a track record of having done exactly that within the DA’s office. So you look at, in early 2000, nobody saw the child sex trafficking issue on the horizon. I saw it on the horizon. Not only did I see it on the horizon, but I have fought ever since to divert the girls who are exploited away from criminalization towards rescue. And also ensuring accountability for the traffickers. So I’m not just talking the talk, I’ve actually walked the talk. I’ve walked the talk and I’ve received national recognition for it.

PALTA (To Sharmin Bock): What concerns are specific to San Francisco and what do you think is unique about this city that you would need to tackle as the DA here?

BOCK: So I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 40 years. I moved here when I was 4 and I’m 49, and I’ve been in Alameda County as a prosecutor for 22 years. The concerns that really seem at the forefront in everyone’s minds today, I think first and foremost, there’s a crisis of confidence in our leadership. What does that mean? That means we have over 1,000 unsolved murders and over 900 unsolved rapes in our crime lab that haven’t even entered the system. That is actually scary because those cases just sitting on the shelf, collecting dust, means that the perpetrators are amongst us. And the primary responsibility of the DA has to be achieving justice for victims of violent crime. Keeping the community safe for our most violent and dangerous criminals. You can’t get there if you have a DNA crime lab in crisis, you can’t get there if you have a DA who’s a political appointee who, at every step of the way, instead of fixing the problem, has been covering the problem up.

TREFNY: That was San Francisco district attorney candidate Sharmin Bock talking about her policy priorities and criticisms of the current administration. This is Crosscurrents from KALW News, and we’re here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta, talking about the pluses and minuses of each candidate. Which brings us to our incumbent, George Gascon. Bock is very critical of him. He’s the incumbent, the presumed frontrunner, so challengers are bound to be critical of that person. We’ll get back to this issue of the DNA lab in a minute. But first, Rina, can you give us some background on Gascon?

PALTA: Well, Gascon is a man who’s been a leader in the criminal justice system for a long time. First, moving up through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department to become second in command, and then as the police chief in Mesa, Arizona.

TREFNY: I actually first heard of him because he played a big role in standing up for immigrant rights down there in Arizona.

PALTA: Exactly, Gascon spent his time in Arizona playing foil, basically to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who basically has taken it upon himself to crack down on illegal immigration in Arizona. And Gascon very publicly opposed Arpaio, didn’t go along with his brand of law enforcement, and testified against his actions in Congress. And that helped Gascon become so widely respected as a law enforcement officer, and it helped him get his position here as chief of police in San Francisco. The question is whether he’s now in the wrong place as district attorney, and that’s an issue his opponents are really beating on. Does this former police chief have the independence and ability to handle things like investigating and possibly charging police misconduct? Or conducting an open review of the DNA lab? Just as a refresher, there was a scandal involving the city’s crime lab a few years back, which led to the drug portion being shut down. Now, there’s a question as to whether the lab that processes DNA could also be compromised. I asked Gascon about that and here’s what he said.

GEORGE GASCON: So first of all, I think it’s really important and my opponents and I do not talk about this, most of the problems that originated with the crime lab preceded me. I came here as the chief of police, actually I was brought here to work on a lot of problems here that have been here for years. When I became aware of the problems with the crime lab, within, actually less than five hours from the time I became aware of the crime lab problem, I did a press conference, brought the public in, talked about it. I did a first level of analysis and determined that controlled substances was the major problem. We shut that down. I called the Justice Department and asked the Justice Department to come in and do an investigation and I called the DA’s office. There were some problems, but the DNA lab was working fine. There were some areas where we had problems with some of the protocols and those protocols were fixed.

PALTA (To George Gason): So let’s move on to the other issue I wanted to talk to you about and that is police oversight. Obviously there’s been some scandals with some possible misconduct on the part of undercover officers. There’s also been ongoing issues in San Francisco about Robbery Abatement Teams and about buy-busts and whether or not those are within the realm of what we like to do in San Francisco. How do you approach police oversight and making sure that people aren’t getting unnecessarily swept up?

GASCON: Well first of all, I think it’s helpful to put things into context. And if you look historically of where I’ve been, I’ve actually been a police reformer for many years. I worked very aggressively to turn around the LAPD after the Ramparts scandal. In fact, I was the one running training for the LAPD at the time and we actually went around working with members of the civil liberties community and the attorney general’s office and actually developed police training. We posted the Bill of Rights in every single classroom. More recently, when you look at the cases involving the Henry Hotel, where you have undercover police officers that were caught on video, allegedly violating people’s rights, I didn’t wait for anybody to tell me that I had to dismiss cases. We immediately dismissed over a hundred cases. So if you are an objective observer, and you look at all the things that I have done, including what I have done in the last 10 months and you would be not only supporting me, but you would see that I have taken very proactive, way above and beyond, to make sure that we have a clean trial process.

TREFNY: That’s current District Attorney George Gascon, who was formerly San Francisco’s police chief. He’s explaining why he doesn’t think there’s an inherent conflict of interest when a police chief becomes DA. This is Crosscurrents, and I’m Ben Trefny here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. Rina, there’s another obvious concern about someone like Gascon becoming DA. And that’s that he doesn’t really have any experience as a prosecutor.

PALTA: That’s right. Gascon argues that he’s worked with attorneys and supervised attorneys throughout his career and has what is certainly a ton of experience evaluating and putting together cases. But, no, he has never worked as a prosecutor, and that could be a concern to some voters. It’s also the case that there are really only two people in this race who’ve worked as prosecutors, Bock being one of them – and only one as a prosecutor in San Francisco, and that’s Bill Fazio. Fazio is pretty incredulous that there are only two candidates in the race who have worked as prosecutors. He’s run before for DA, actually this will be his fourth try. But he says he entered the race because the other candidates, to him, are so lacking.

TREFNY: Let’s hear from Fazio now.

BILL FAZIO: Unfortunately there’s not a lot of training, there’s little enthusiasm, there’s no creativity in that office when you have a leader who’s never been in a courtroom before. Who has never practiced law. Who is a former police chief. He may have done fine in that capacity, but in my opinion, frankly, he has no business being the chief prosecutor. Ms. Bock has experience, thank God. Mr. Onek has absolutely no experience, and I’ve been with him, he’s a nice young man, he’s a professor of law. But he’s up in his ivory tower; he’s never stepped down into the dirt and grit of the city of San Francisco. He doesn’t work in San Francisco. Mr. Vu has been a defense attorney in Orange County. I dare say since he’s only lived here since April he doesn’t have a real handle on things. So all things being equal, I think I bring to the table what all the other candidates ostensibly bring.

If you look at Gascon, he’s got a background in law enforcement. I’ve been in law enforcement in one capacity or another for 35 years. Ms. Bock is an actual prosecutor, I have more prosecutorial experience than she has and all of mine is local here in San Francisco. Mr. Onek has progressive ideas; he’s been opposed to the death penalty from the very beginning whereas some of the other candidates have changed their position. I’ve been opposed to the death penalty for the last 15 years and have publicly stated I would never seek the death penalty in San Francisco. And Mr. Trinh is a defense attorney and I, too am a defense attorney at this point in time. So I’d like to think that even if someone were committed to one of the other candidates that I would be a very good and appropriate second choice in this ranked choice voting that we have here in San Francisco.

PALTA (To Bill Fazio): So if you won the election and became DA, what are some of the first policies you would implement?

FAZIO: Well, I would underscore the importance of juvenile justice, which has always been ignored. I’ve worked as a prosecutor and a defense attorney at so-called “juvie” here in San Francisco. It’s physically separated from the office and the people who work there are separated in spirit as well. It’s never been given high priority. I would make that a high priority in my office because it’s the one area where we can identify people who really don’t belong in the system and get them out of the system.

TREFNY: That was DA candidate Bill Fazio, speaking with KALW’s Rina Palta, who now joins me in the studio to talk about the San Francisco district attorney’s race. So we’re down to our final candidate.

PALTA: We are. And that’s Vu Trinh, who I’ve saved for last because he’s a bit of an outlier in this race. And that’s largely because Trinh, who until recently was a public defender in Orange County, doesn’t actually believe in the politics surrounding this race. Here’s what he says about the fact that district attorneys are elected at all.

VU TRINH: I’ve seen that this politicization of the criminal justice system has done a real disservice to the entire justice system, where we see a lot of injustices when prosecutors are more concerned with their conviction rate than doing justice and doing what’s right. One of my primary goals is to depoliticize that office, from the investigative unit, to the men and women who serve as prosecutors in that office.

TREFNY: So Trinh is running for DA despite not really liking the fact that it’s a political office he’s running for. What kinds of things would he do if elected?

PALTA: Well, one of his ideas is to digitize everything in the court system, which is a more revolutionary idea than one would think, because the criminal justice system, I’m pretty sure, will be the last market for paper products on the planet.

TREFNY: That and journalism.

PALTA: Yeah. And he also has a plan that would basically allow anyone to set up a surveillance camera on their property and hook it into a police network. Here’s how Trinh explains that plan.

TRINH: When something actually occurred in the areas where there is surveillance, we can use that to accurately identify the perpetrator. Because the way we’re doing things and investigating now is very archaic. It’s the same type of investigative process that has been used for centuries. We really need to move that along because we have an interest in protecting the innocent. And I can assure you, I’ll bet you 25 percent or even higher of people that are caught up in the criminal justice system due to eye witness identification is being wrapped up in a case where they’re clearly innocent of the crime.

TREFNY: That’s San Francisco DA candidate Vu Trihn, explaining one of his outside-the-box ideas. This is Crosscurrents. We’re discussing the San Francisco race for district attorney with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. One of the benefits of having such a crowded race, Rina, must be having so many unique and interesting ideas floating around.

PALTA: Definitely. There’s no question that having this race be a competitive one, which hasn’t happened in almost a decade, is shaking things up a bit and also offering a kind of referendum on how the voters feel about our criminal justice system. Do they want an insider or an outsider? A reformist or an experienced professional? All of the candidates are coming to the race with different things to offer. I’d say the main drawback of this being a ranked choice election is that the candidates, by virtue of the system, are really required to be a bit guarded about the specifics of what they’d do in office, and more inclined to band together on the surface and fight for those second and third place votes.

TREFNY: Behind George Gascon at this point, who’s probably polling ahead as the incumbent.

PALTA: Exactly.

TREFNY: Thanks a lot, Rina.

PALTA: Thank you.

The polls are already open for those who’d like to vote early, but election day is November 8.

This weekend, an important bill will go into effect in the state of California. It’s called AB 109, but most people know it as “realignment.” It was crafted as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling back in May, which ordered the state to drastically reduce its prison population by as many as 40,000 inmates. What lawmakers came up with is an idea that’s been floating around the criminal justice world for some time: moving the least dangerous inmates back to the communities they came from.

KALW News’ criminal justice editor, Rina Palta, has been covering prison overcrowding, and the realignment solution. She joined Ben Trefny to discuss how realignment is going to be implemented throughout the state.

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BEN TREFNY: So, Rina, prisons will stop accepting these less dangerous criminals and they’ll be kept in county jails. Are they ready for that?

RINA PALTA: There’s a little panic in the air in some counties. Los Angeles, for example, isn’t looking forward to handling 10,000 new felony offenders per year. Officials from some of the other southern counties, which are traditionally a little more “tough on crime” and, therefore, have a lot of people coming back, have expressed anger over the shift. But here in the Bay Area, there’s a lot of support for the policy. Wendy Still, San Francisco’s Chief Probation Officer, worked for years in the state prison system at a high level, and had this to say about realignment:

WENDY STILL: It’s the right thing to do. There are 47,000 inmates that cycle in and out of prison and spend less than 90 days. And having spent so many decades working in that system, it’s a waste of money and it doesn’t provide any type of meaningful intervention to actually change lives.

TREFNY: Rina, how does realignment address this cycle in and out of prison that Chief Still is talking about?

PALTA: One of the major ways is that now offenders won’t be sent back to prison for parole violations. Most people have probably heard by now that California’s recidivism rate is about 66% – that means two out of three people who leave prison go back within three years. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve been convicted of a new crime. Over half of the offenders who return to prison do so because of a parole violation, according to a study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2009.

TREFNY: And what exactly constitutes a parole violation?

PALTA: Currently, nearly everyone who leaves prison basically has to sign a contract, usually for three years, that says they’ll report to a parole officer and abide by certain restrictions, like taking drug tests or showing up for meetings, and it states that law enforcement doesn’t need a warrant to search their house. But if you break that contract at all, your parole officer can send you back to prison. Also, if law enforcement thinks that you’ve committed a new crime, but they don’t have the resources or enough proof to charge you with that crime, there’s a mechanism for sending you back to prison on a parole violation instead. That requires less proof, but also results in up to a year in prison, often less.

There’s been a slow drawdown over the past couple of years in issuing parole violations, but realignment takes it much further and says to counties: First of all, you’re responsible now for supervising nonviolent people getting out of prison, and if any of those people commit a violation, they’ll have to serve time for that violation in a county jail – or even better, counties find another sort of punishment besides putting violators in jail for 90 days. So where you’ve had something like 5,000 per month of these parole violators going to prison in the past, that’s no longer going to happen.

TREFNY: So, you said that counties might find other sorts of punishment besides putting violators in jail for 90 days. What’s another punishment that they might put forth?

PALTA: There’s something called “flash incarceration,” which is just a few days, sticking someone in jail for a few days.

TREFNY: A sort of shock treatment, in a way?

PALTA: Exactly. It’s kind of like, you have to obey these rules, but we’re not going to disrupt your life and make it so you can’t go to your job or pick up your kids. We’re going to make this short and sweet, just so you get the message. There’s also house arrest issues, there’s ankle monitoring; there are all kinds of things you can do.

TREFNY: So if they end up incarcerating them, do the county jails have space to handle a lot of new parole violators?

PALTA: That’s really the 500-million-dollar question. That’s about how much money the state is giving the counties in the first nine months of realignment to handle these parolees and the new low-level offenders they’ll be absorbing. And pretty much anyone will tell you, that’s not enough money.

TREFNY: So what happens then, when the $500 million runs out? Will counties just be forced to let people out?

PALTA: Kind of. For the average citizen, one of the biggest questions going into realignment has been: What’s different about keeping someone in jail for a crime instead of prison, or having the county supervise someone instead of the state? Well, if counties lock people up for their full sentences and don’t do anything differently from what the state has been doing, then there won’t be much of a difference, and we may continue to deal with these high rates of recidivism and overcrowding. I asked Matt Cate, the secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation about that and here’s what he said:

MATT CATE: There’s no question. If the county tries to emulate the state, if the community corrections partnership sits down and says, “You know what? Let’s take the money and re-create the state system exactly as the state runs it.” Number one, there’s not enough money to do that. And number two, I think we’ve demonstrated that’s really not the right approach. We finally know in California that you’ve got to combine the tough on crime law enforcement with a heavy dose of treatment if you want to reduce recidivism.

PALTA: What Cate is saying is that without sufficient funds, counties will have to come up with other ways of handling these low-level offenders, besides locking them up, or they’re going to have to come up their own cash to keep them in jail.

But people should know that realignment will not lead to felons getting released to the streets. If anyone is released, it’s more likely that it will be people who are in jail now – who’ve committed misdemeanors, or are awaiting trial. Either they’ll be let out early or put in community programs or on house arrest. You know, over 70% of people in jail in California are not serving time for a crime – they’re awaiting trial and they’re in jail, many of them, because they couldn’t afford bail.

But the other money question is if there’s even enough funding coming in to adequately beef up these alternative programs, like drug programs, and house arrests, and ankle monitoring. The answer may be no.

TREFNY: And what about public safety? If fewer people are locked up, that also means offenders are likely to face less time behind bars. So, there is this fear that this will result in a hike in crime.

PALTA: Certainly, there are many people who believe crime will go up, at least at first, before the system has time to even out and get rehabilitation programs into gear. But down the line, the hope is that counties will do a better job than the state at keeping people from re-offending. And Secretary Cate from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says this is the best option when you consider the alternative.

CATE: Well, let’s keep in mind that absent realignment, we’d be releasing 35,000 prisoners onto the streets in the next two years. No one wants to talk about that option because obviously that’s a disaster for public safety. So when I hear someone saying, “Oh my gosh, I might have to release a low-level pre-trial detainee?” Well that’s a much better option than a wholesale release of state prisoners under the three-judge panel decision and the Supreme Court’s decision.

PALTA: So Cate’s point is that something needs to be done to get California in compliance with the Constitution, and they’re hoping this is the best way to do it.

Read more about prison realignment at our criminal justice blog the Informant.